Georgetown daycare permanently shut down and State investigation underway
A daycare in Georgetown has been permanently shut down and, a State investigation is underway.
Parents, who take their children to Creation Station Daycare, went to drop off their children Wednesday morning to find a sign saying the daycare was closed.
Jesus Life Center acquired the building just about a week ago where the daycare was located and had the plans of creating a school called Asher Academy. But once they took over, Pastor Brad Horner said he realized the daycare which had been operating at the location for many years before had several big problems.
Pastor said within a few days of their arrival they opened an internal investigation. “The first investigation was the money. There were two sets of books. There were multiple violations on how the staff was handling the paperwork of the students,” he said. The other part of the investigation was operational. He said he noticed some of the kids were not accounted for, and believed some staff members were working without proper certification, “Which includes background checks, and every teacher has to have a CPR certificate, every teacher has to have an SID certificate,” he said.
According to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, the daycare did receive several violations over the years, such as caregivers not knowing how many children they were responsible for, missing health records, and not being current with health and fire inspections, among other violations.
Click here for more information (the state had already changed the name to Asher Academy).
Pastor Horner said he gave the staff of the daycare three days to get in compliance. “The kids are the number one priority. For us to allow any other person to come in here and run a daycare here, we want educated people, we want people that have a degree that want to teach children how to learn, not babysit.” he said they did nothing, so he terminated the lease and contacted the state. “We understand the displacement of all the parents and all the children, but we felt like the best opportunity for the kids was in the care of their parents and not in an environment where staff was not prepared to serve the children.”
Pastor Horner said they are not obligated financially, but they are hoping to help make this right. “I've made a personal commitment to Jesus Life Center to those parents that we will take up an offering, we will meet everyone at their needs, and we will do our best to make sure those families are taken care of.”
The Department of Family and Protective Services said they received allegations there were concerns a staff member was acting inappropriately around children, and there were some staff members without complete background checks, Child Care Licensing is investigating.
Officials at the Department of Family and Protective Services said they want to make it clear they had nothing to do with the daycare closing.
We did reach out to the director of Creation Station Daycare for her side of the story, but we have not yet heard back from her.